


As much as I like you

by pleasebekidding



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Also Sentinel!Isabel and Max!Guide in a strictly platonic sense, Foster Care, Guide!Alex, M/M, Sentinel!Michael, Sentinel/Guide, Sgt Jesse Manes died so Alex is likely to have a much nicer life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 16:05:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17984300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pleasebekidding/pseuds/pleasebekidding
Summary: There's no language for it, but Michael is a Sentinel, and Alex is his Guide. They'll figure the rest out along the way.





	As much as I like you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CrossbowDontMiss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrossbowDontMiss/gifts).



> This thing wants to be 12 novels, but I only wanted it to be a drabble. I guess we all lose? Or win? I don't know. It's a slice of life when they're starting to figure shit out. For Ryan, my beloved shipper buddy. Can't even believe we're shipping canon, what the actual fuck.

His brothers are 17 and 19, when it happens, and in the end the court agrees to let Jesse Jr have custody of Tony. But neither them feel equipped to look after an 11-year-old, which Alex understands. He looks at them and he doesn’t exactly see the nurturing spirit required to look after a kid. Of course, they’d probably still have done a better job than Jesse Sr.

Or maybe not.

There’s something different about Alex and he might not be sure exactly what it is, but he knows it makes his brothers feel awkward around him and until he fell asleep at the wheel on the highway and ended up splattered all over a ravine, half eaten by coyotes, it had made Alex’s father’s eyes flash dangerously and his hands fold into fists. Maybe it’s better he’s gone. Alex will never find out how much worse things might have gotten once he was grown up, now, and there’s some relief in that.

Less relief is to be found in the miserable corridors of the group home affectionately known as McLaren. It’s not in Roswell, but it’s the closest one to home. The kids in Roswell are just that — kids — with all the oblique cruelty and pettiness of their species, but as it turns out, kids in the system have learned to distill all of that into a core of real rage. They come by it honestly, Alex supposes, but it means the smart money is on keeping under the radar. Alex rarely makes eye contact with anyone. It’s a strange feeling. He’s a caring kid, likes to make people feel better, and holding his distance in this way makes him sadder than losing his father ever could have.

And then there’s Michael Guerin.

When he arrives at the home with a black eye and a cut across his face (tossed out of another foster family, Alex guesses) he strides like he’s done it a thousand times before. His belongings are stuffed into a big green trash bag, and Michael is barely making the effort to keep the bag from dragging on the ground. He tosses it under the empty bed alongside Alex’s and throws himself onto the blanket, feigning absolutely apathy (and feigning it badly).

“Hey, Guerin,” Alex says, and Micheal turns his head, seeing Alex for the first time. He swings his legs over the side of the bed and sits up, alarmed.

“Alex. What the hell are _you_ doing here?”

It sounds aggressive, sounds like ‘fuck off’, but Alex sees something else. Before Alex’s mom died, she used to pack Michael an extra sandwich, when he was living close enough to go to school with Alex. They used to seek each other to sit quietly on the playground sometimes, read while everyone else was playing army or just kicking a ball around. Michael had made Alex feel seen.

And he thinks that maybe he had helped Michael feel like he belonged somewhere.

“My dad died,” Alex replies.

Michael nods, and his expression softens. “I’ll show you where I hide.”

 

They don’t always live at McLaren Hall. Sometimes there is a foster home, for a while. Sometimes in Roswell, sometimes the next county, enough so it’s a miracle they are even keeping their heads above water at school. But they both excel. Alex’s inclination is not to give a shit but Michael reminds him the best chance they have for getting out of their situation is getting into college. High enough grades, the right sob story in their admission essays, they might just get a full ride. It’s enough to keep Alex working, even when he can’t find a way to care. It’s a better thought than the inevitability of the military. Manes men are military men. His brothers are both on the path already; this is the first time Alex has ever considered that he might not have to ever go there. He doesn’t have Michael’s beautiful, brilliant mind — no one does — but he’s not an idiot.

When they’re both there, they have their hiding place, space over a broom closet which no one else knows about, lined with treasures, books, a pile of old college prospectuses, a handful of old cushions to make it comfortable. They have a discman, too. It's so old and obsolete that when they first found it, neither of them owned any CDs, but they bought a handful from Goodwill (and pilfered one occasionally from a foster family), and they have a nice little collection. Pearl Jam and Counting Crows, Bright Eyes and Credence.

Sometimes, up in that crawl space with its dirty window that lets in light but doesn’t allow a view, they touch. There’s nothing in it, really, just two boys who have rarely in their short lives been held by anyone, realizing that touch is as essential to survival as sunshine and good food. Napping, with Alex’s head on Michael’s stomach, or Michael’s arms around Alex’s body while Alex reads out loud. Sitting against the wall with their shoulders pressed tight, murmuring occasionally as they try to master physics and chemistry. They don’t talk about it, and they stay safely distant in front of other people. Still, it matters.

 

And then Michael comes back from a brief stint with a family and he’s different, somehow. Sick? Different enough to earn himself a trip to the hospital for some tests. Headaches, and everything’s _too loud_ , he says, keeps zoning out, eyes unfocused. Alex hates it. The desire — the _need_ — to help is overwhelming, but he’s not even allowed to see him, sleeping on his own in the sick room usually associated with upset stomach or the flu. Like a hospital ward from a horror movie, pale green walls and over-bright light.

Alex feels sick himself. Michael is like a magnet. He lies in the dormitory room with the snores and farts of four other boys for company and finally finds himself sneaking out, past offices and common rooms until he’s easing the door open to the sick bay room.

“What are you doing?” comes a voice. Alex turns around in alarm. It’s the nurse; she sort of pretty, and young, gentle.

“He’s my friend,” Alex says, tensing. In the room behind, Michael makes a noise in his sleep which sounds very much like he wants Alex closer.

The nurse sighs, and tips her head. “Keep the noise down,” she says, kindly, and with an expression that suggests she knows she’s going to regret this. “Okay?”

Alex sits on the edge of the bed and presses his hand against Michael’s shoulder, and Michael shudders, once, rolling closer to Alex as he does it. His breathing evens out, and he stills, and Alex smiles in the dark.

By the time the nurse comes back, a couple of hours later, they’re stretched out on the bed together sleeping soundly. Michael’s fever is gone, and he looks better than he has in couple of days. She locks the door and leaves them to it.

 

It’s raining. The kind of rain that is rare in Roswell, where almost a third of the year’s rain comes down over the space of a couple of days. Drowning out every other sound. Michael flinches against it, rubs his eyes like it’s an oppressive amount of sunlight instead of dull gray _nothing_.

“I know there’s something wrong,” Alex says, quietly. His hair is longer, at the moment. Looks like a bird has taking to nest in it. He has an eyeliner he swiped from a pharmacy and he’s been practicing drawing clean lines with it. Might be his new thing. Fuck, he’s fifteen, time for a teenage rebellion, right? As long as he doesn’t risk his time with Michael.

“I don’t know how to tell you about it,” Michael answers, shifting slightly closer. “Don’t worry about it. I feel better now.”

“I know I’m amazing, but you know I don’t really buy it when you say you feel better as soon as I’m around, right? Because _science_.” He tosses the eyeliner aside and reaches out, ready to bundle Michael in. Michael moves easily into the crook of his arm, head on Alex’s shoulder, and Alex kisses his forehead without thinking.

“Are you gay?”

Alex rubs his eyes. “Yeah, but don’t worry about it, Guerin.”

“No, that’s… I’m not worried, okay?” He doesn’t move. Or if he does, maybe his hand curls around Alex’s ribcage a little more firmly.

“Something happened,” he finally says. “That house — it was like I was living under a fist that was waiting to fall. I was feeling so paranoid. I started feeling like I could hear things. From too far away. Couldn’t decide if I was imagining it or not. Food started tasting weird and I thought they might be trying to poison me. The light was too bright all the time, I couldn’t sleep right. I tied a scarf around my eyes but it was too rough, same as the sheets. Like I couldn’t block a single thing out.”

Alex listens intently. He understands this, or thinks he does; no kid has spent time in the system and not lived with someone prone to taking their frustrations out with their fists. And Alex was primed for it. Jesse Manes had started to employ that particular brand of stress management about a month after his wife died. But this sounds more intense, somehow.

“But they checked you out in the hospital, right?”

“Yeah. Nothing.” Michael is quiet for a long time, and Alex starts to wonder if he’s gone to sleep. “And then I get back here, and as soon as we… as you… I can ignore it. I can hear the rain, but I can’t hear the highway. You take the buzzing away. This sweater — which is ridiculous, by the way…” Alex growls fondly. He likes the stupid devils smiling on his oversized sweater. “It’s rough, but it doesn’t _feel_ rough, not the way my t-shirt did before you got here.”

Alex has always been stunned by Michael’s ability to be honest; it’s not until this moment that he’s started to think it might be that Michael is honest with _him_ , and him alone. He feels very privileged by that. He reaches out hesitantly and lets his fingers trace over Michael’s cheek, even skating over his lips, down his jaw. Michael doesn’t open his eyes. He just eases into the touch, and he looks at least a little bit more at peace.

“There’s one other thing,” Michael says.

“Tell me.”

“When it gets too much… sometimes, I make things happen. Not on purpose. It just gets to be too much and I just lose a second or two — and the next thing I know, things aren’t where I left them.”

Alex nods, thinking. None of this makes any kind of sense that he can see, but the conclusion is pretty simple. They need to stay close together, before something happens to get Michael into some serious trouble.

 

Unpredictable 16-year-old boys are harder to place than their adorable 8-year-old counterparts. Especially when one wears kohl smudged around his eyes, and a nose ring, and black fingernail polish, and the other has an intensity about him that puts people on edge. By the time they’re most of the way through sophomore year, no one has any further interest in trying to place Michael and Alex in homes. Nor is anyone bothering trying to keep them apart. There’s no real dividend in that; neither of them make any kind of trouble at McLaren, and the staff have their hands full with virtually every other boy there. They end up sharing a twin room, instead of a dormitory, sort of a consolation prize for the fact that everyone knew they’ll never be placed.

Neither cares. They’ve been placed. With each other, the way they should be.

 

“We need to talk,” Alex says, when Michael gets back to the room, one day the week before finals. His study materials are spread out on the desk, but he hasn’t been able to focus. “It’s about Isabel.”

Michael shakes his head. “She’s fine. Just some catfight of the week.”

“Not what I’m talking about, Guerin. I saw something. Her and Max. She was…”

Michael frowns.

“I think she does the thing you do. Where your senses get… I saw them in a classroom. He was comforting her, you know… I could see on her face, she was trying to… to do what you do. Max was helping. It wasn’t new to him.”

Michael frowns again, and shakes his head.

“I’m serious, Guerin. I heard him. He was telling her to focus on him. To ignore everything else. Same as I do for you. Holding her hand, keeping her grounded.”

“No, if she… I would know, okay? I would…”

He sits on the edge of the bed. Alex wishes he could hear what Michael was thinking, because the way his forehead smoothes out says he’s getting ready to shut down for a day or two. Alex hates that. Probably, he’s sifting through memories and fragments of memories trying to find something to support or refute that entire notion.

“You’re right. She does. That’s why. Why _they_ were always closer. Why I was always on the outside. She needs Max like I need you.”

Maybe it’s better. Maybe knowing that link is there will help Michael feel less like an outcast. It’s hurt him, since the moment a nice couple walked into McLaren all those years ago and decided to take Max and Isabel but leave Michael behind.

“It’s not the same,” Alex says, shaking his head.

“You just said —”

“Yeah, I… it’s not what I meant,” Alex says, blushing furiously. “Because they’re brother and sister, and we’re…”

Why. Why choose this moment to say anything at all — why choose this moment to complicate things? But Michael looks so lonely, sitting on the edge of his bed with his hands clasped between his knees, while Alex sits on the padded chair by his desk, wishing he was close enough to touch.

“What are we, Alex?”

There’s a challenge in Michael’s tone. And he looks unhappy, and those two things have Alex on edge.

“I think you should talk to her, that’s all,” Alex says. He turns back to his calculus homework and ignores the rumbling of his stomach. Dinner for the older boys isn’t for another hour.

 

Summer rolls around and good behavior means they’re allowed to get jobs. And Alex’s brothers come to visit him. They come bearing gifts that say ‘sorry I never call’ and ‘sorry about that one family we heard about’ and they pointedly don’t look at the handcuff necklace Alex bought at the head shop above the music store a couple of months back and won’t remove, or the kohl smudged above and below his eyes. They’ve always been different. Bigger than Alex, stronger, though Alex is prepared to bet that if it came down to it, he could take either one of them in an unfair fight. He’s a scrapper. Jesse Jr gives Alex his guitar. He doesn’t know Alex has one of his own, that he and Michael have been learning to play, and that they're getting pretty good thanks to a steady diet of YouTube videos. He just says _thank you_. For the guitar, for the beaten-up leather jacket Tony hands over, for the envelope full of cash they’ve scraped together. After the visit Michael helps Alex sew a hidden pocket into the inside of his backpack. They’ll need it, someday.

“The music helps too, doesn’t it,” Alex asks one evening. They’ve both worked an eight hour day, Michael at the junk yard and Alex at the UFO museum, and they’re sitting cross-legged on Alex’s bed, finally enjoying the chance to play together, instead of one at a time.

“It makes everything quieter,” Michael agrees. He’s already sick of the three-chord structure and messing with interesting tunings; Alex is pretty sure he figures these things out mathematically before he even tries them out musically. His hair is longer than it was, and the curls bob around his face. His nose, flat at the bridge and so noble-looking, suits his young adult face better than it suited him when he was a kid. His eyelashes are long and a little pale and where the light catches in them, they look like gold.

The look Alex and Michael give each other is long and loaded and doesn’t break until Alex glances at Michael’s mouth. He leans a little closer, barely sure of what he’s doing. He just needs to know. To feel it. What it’s like to have those lips move against his own. To taste Michael’s tongue.

“It’s almost dinner,” Michael says, looking away, and Alex realizes his mistake:

                          Michael had asked if Alex was gay. He’d never said he was himself.

The sick feeling in his stomach means that suddenly, dinner is the furthest thing from his mind. But he stares at the floor for a moment and then steels his spine; because at least now he knows.

“Think it’s sloppy joes,” Michael says, nostrils flaring for a moment, picking up on something Alex couldn’t possibly recognize. “Could be worse. Can you grab the Tabasco? I’m gonna go clean up.”

For a couple of days, things are different. Not tense, but quiet. Michael’s boss at the junk yard is a bit of an asshole, and it sends Michael’s senses spiking every which way, but he doesn’t hesitate to let Alex calm him down. To lean into Alex’s soothing hands and focus on the sound of his heartbeat, just like they’ve been doing for the last year and a half.

 

Alex sits in the ticket booth for the UFO museum; for whatever reason, Roswell has been quieter this season, so he has plenty of time to work on the endless rehash of his college admissions essay and listen to music. He doesn’t care about the stupid outfit as long as he’s not expected to drop the eyeliner, which, no.

He’s doodling in the corner of a notebook, sort of lost in thought, when Michael approaches. Not good, really, since he’s supposed to be at work himself.

“Can we talk?”

Alex nods. “Shoot.”

“Somewhere more private?”

So this is it, the overdue conversation about how Michael is straight. This is going to be shit, especially since his need for Alex’s calming presence is unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon. But Alex nods, and flips the sign — five minutes would be more than enough — and steps out the back of his booth. He takes off his dumbass hat and runs his fingers through his hair like it matters, like Michael hasn’t seen him at his worst and his best and his average and he crosses his arms over his chest, prematurely heartbroken. Seems awful to have that happen here in a room where the stars are replicated faithfully in the ceiling, and the shadows dance so intimately.

“So, talk,” he says, wondering how difficult it would be to change rooms at McLaren. And then Michael has his hands on either side of Alex’s face, and he’s kissing him, thoroughly; so beautifully, so well. Alex’s heart soars and his body responds like he’s been electrocuted. When Michael pulls away (and he doesn’t go far), their eyes lock, assessing.

They should say something. Alex should lock the door. Michael should quit his job. But they smile at each other, instead, and lean in for one last kiss.

“I’ll see you tonight,” Alex says, since Michael can’t seem to say anything. Michael nods, and wraps his arms around Alex’s body for a good long time. And then he goes.

 

Later, in the crawl space, they’re not shy. “Have you done this before?” Alex asks, pulling Michael’s shirt over his head. Michael laughs.

“Yeah but not…”

“Not with a guy?”

“Not with anyone I liked as much as I like you.”

Alex’s smile is so wide his face might crack, as Michael pushes him onto his back, lips against his throat, hand already unbuckling his belt. And it’s good, it’s so fucking good; there’s a sureness, here, a commitment. They’re experimental and playful and they laugh and groan and gasp. And afterwards, they tangle together. Too tired to stay awake, really, but too buzzed to stop touching each other, kissing lazily, like they’ve wanted to for so many years. It gets hard to keep track of who is touching who, and where, like echoes on echoes. It’s better than good. It’s home.

Still?

“It’s not… It’s not just because of the…” Because Alex can siphon some of that feeling of being overwhelmed, because Michael functions better when Alex is close enough to touch? He can’t say it. He can’t ask.

“Max and Isabel are brother and sister,” Michael says, flatly. “This is different. I need you. But I _want_ you, too. All I can hear right now is your breath, your heartbeat. All I can smell is your skin. All I can feel is where we’re touching. And it’s all I want.”

Alex closes his eyes. One day soon he’ll find the words to tell Michael he loves him, but it doesn’t need to be today. They’re raw enough as is.

The future is unfolding beneath them an inch at a time, and there is only one sure thing.

**~fin~**

 

 


End file.
